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Masterful Musings

Drivel From the Ketchup Boy

The Power of Misunderstanding

Our previous mayor was Glenn Murray. He was one of those environmentaltypes, and one of his dreams for Winnipeg was rapid transit. When Murrayleft office, Sam Katz took over, and redirected the money that had beenallocated for rapid transit.

A lot of Winnipeggers are furious with Katz for doing this. They wantedto see rapid transit in this city, and I can understand that. But here'sthe kicker. All of the people I've talked to who are angry that Murray'splan was scuttled are under the strong impression that Murray planned toput an LRT into Winnipeg. This is simply not true. All Murray wanted todo with the horrendous amount of money allocated for the project was tocordon off lanes and so on for express buses. But tell these peoplethat, they will insist that Murray's plan was for an LRT.

I wonder how much support there would have been for Murray's plan ifthey had realized that it wasn't about LRT, just about a few more busesconnecting the university of Manitoba with downtown?

Comments

Yes...what Winnipeg needs is a LRT system. My father always talks about how Juba (I believe) wanted to put in a monorail-type system and no one wanted it. Now we couldn't afford it. It would have at least been a start. I'm truly envious of cities that have something in place.

My own personal beef with the bus system here is the lack of Express buses during rush hour. The St. Norbert buses come every 30 minutes (yet there are 3 Fort Richmond buses during the same period). Not only does everyone going to St. Norbert get on my bus, thus making it packed, but other people who get off on various stops along Pembina also use it. It's an unenjoyable 45 minutes getting home, I tell you. They should have a bus that stops at key points (Confusion Corner and University Crescent for instance) but otherwise shuttles people home to their neighborhoods.

And I hate to say it, but our fares are out-of-line also. People talk about how we pay the same as Calgary, etc., but what they fail to realize is that those cities have alternate options that ARE in fact rapid-transit (like the LRT system in Cow-town). It's comparing apples to oranges.